The parable of the wedding banquet, today’s assigned gospel reading from the lectionary serves as a backdrop as we reflect this morning on the practice of “Radical hospitality,” the first in a series of five practices of fruitful congregations that we are exploring together through shared reading and this sermon series.

On my blog this week, I invited others to share some of their hospitality experiences.  Ed Smith shared a wonderful story and has given me permission to share it with you.  This is mostly as he tells it.

“On the Sunday before Christmas, 2002, I was in Wako, Japan (near Tokyo) to assist with an experiment.  I had spotted a church a couple days earlier and had decided that morning to go.  I didn’t know what time the service was.  I knew I wouldn’t understand what was going on (I had learned but a few phrases in Japanese).  To this day I couldn’t say anything about the church’s denominational affiliation, but I knew that I wanted to spend that morning among other Christians.

“The people who greeted me outside of the sanctuary didn’t speak English, but quickly found someone who did.  A short stout bearded gentleman introduced himself and sat down with me in the back of the sanctuary, explaining to me that I had come during the Sunday school hour and that the worship service would follow.  He hurried off only to return with an outline of a church service in English.  It was a fill-in-the-blank form to which he immediately began to add the scriptures and the title of the lesson.  Later, he sat with me and shared his Bible, which presented English and Japanese side by side on opposite pages.

“He introduced me to the pastor.  The pastor was proud of his church (a humble building compared to North Broadway) and gave me the full tour in his somewhat-broken English.  We walked throughout the building while he pointed out architectural features and occasionally interrupted small group meetings so that he could introduce the “visitor from the United States.” We came eventually to a rec-room where children were working on various arts & crafts projects.  He stopped and said, ‘After service we have… party… You come to party!’

“I politely declined, saying that I would need to get back to the lab by then.

“As expected the worship service was hard to follow, except of course for the hymns.  The language was different, but those old melodies were all familiar and helped put me in the right frame of mind for Christmas.  After the service the pastor asked all of the visitors to gather together.  Turns out there were a half-dozen or so of us internationals, some from various places in Europe, Africa, China, and one other American.  We all signed a guest registry and posed with the pastor for a photo.  Then he again insisted, ‘Come downstairs, you all stay for party!’

“I could no longer refuse.  The party included a sort-of-talent show including dancing children and a puppet show (amazing how some entertainment transcends language barriers).  This was followed by a covered dish dinner that featured sushi right alongside the usual casseroles one might expect to find at such an event back in the States.  I sat with strangers, only some of whom spoke English.  We ate together and shared a little of our lives with one another.  It was one of the most memorable experiences of my visit to Japan.”

That pastor in Japan had the right idea.  We are having party!  You come?

In Matthew’s gospel, the parable of the wedding banquet, which is probably original to Luke’s gospel, is adapted to the situation of a community where the Jews have rejected the gospel, and the church is becoming a Gentile church.  Likely because there has been violence against the Jews, there is violence in the parable to reflect that historical experience.

When the details that are specific to the experience of Matthew’s community are stripped away there is a fundamental story about people who are too busy for the party, and a host – Jesus – who is determined to have guests, and will find them and have his party.  Furthermore, to be a guest is to come equipped to grow in discipleship, to be properly attired, as it were, for the party.

We have been invited to this party that is the kingdom of God, and as guests invited and welcomed by Jesus, we have certain obligations.  Hospitality is one of them.  Paul, the apostle, talks frequently about it, saying in Romans 15:7, “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”

This past Friday’s Wall Street Journal featured an article about Thomas Harrison, the mystery worshipper.  He visits churches to evaluate their hospitality.  He is very meticulous in his inspection of facilities, his evaluation of hospitality, and assessment of the worship service and the sermon.  He is, by his own admission, a stickler for light bulbs and bathrooms.  But it is his description of the behavior of fellow worshippers which caught my attention.  Once, a woman reached right over him to shake a friend's hand without excusing or introducing herself, he says.  And on more than one occasion, Mr.  Harrison says he's caught congregants complaining about the pastor.  Mr.  Harrison has never given a five star rating to any congregation that he has so far evaluated.

When I travel, I can’t resist being a bit of a “mystery” worshipper myself.  Several years ago, while traveling to our vacation destination, Gary and I had occasion to visit a downtown church in the Capitol of a Midwestern state.  We arrived for the early service, and discovered as we crossed the street from where we had parked, that people were assembling for this service outdoors in a small garden area.  It was a lovely summer morning, and this was an unexpected and pleasant surprise.  So, we slipped into the garden through an arched trellis that opened from the sidewalk.  We knew immediately that we had come in the wrong door.

The people who knew what to do had entered through the building, and were now exiting the building through a door where ushers were stationed with bulletins, and a cart of hymnals was available.  We made our way around the chairs and waited to be noticed by the ushers, whose attention was focused on those coming out of the building, not those obviously unknowing visitors who had entered directly from the sidewalk.  Finally, having gained bulletins and hymnals, we found our way to seats.  No one greeted us.

Sometime between the opening hymn and the time for communion, a person who was obviously a street person wandered in and sat down directly in front of us.  He participated in the communion, and left at the end of the service.  When we noticed that others were folding up their own chairs and lining up to carry them into the building, we did likewise.  We returned our hymnals to the cart, our chairs to the rack just inside the door, and followed the flow of people through a back stairwell, into the kitchen, and eventually reached the social hall.  We helped ourselves to some coffee, and went in search of the sanctuary, which I wanted to see.  The pastor was there, preparing for the next service, deep in conversation with a communion steward.  Neither greeted us.  We passed the welcome center.  No one greeted us.  We went right on out the front door and turned toward the car.  I remember wondering if I had become invisible.

In their book Widening the Welcome of Your Church: Biblical Hospitality and the Welcoming Congregation, Fred Bernhard and Steve Clapp define hospitality this way:

“Hospitality is the attitude and practice of providing the atmosphere and opportunities, however risky, in which strangers are free to become friends, thereby feeling accepted, included and loved.  The relationship thus opens up the possibility for eventual communion among the host, the stranger, and God.”

It seemed to me as though on that summer Sunday morning, Gary and I had arrived as strangers and departed as strangers.  As it turns out, that wasn’t true.  After leaving the building, as we stood at the street corner, waiting for the “walk” signal to cross the street, our fellow worshiper, the street person, with whom we had shared the broken bread, came and stood with us.  He greeted us and chatted about the beautiful day we were all enjoying.  We were not invisible.  We were welcomed.  We were greeted.  We were blessed.  Among all those we encountered that morning, he and he alone offered communion between stranger, host and God.

God will make a way for the kingdom to be shared.  And if it couldn’t happen inside the walls of the church, or even in the little garden, it could happen at the corner of walk and don’t walk.  What a pity it didn’t happen while we were inside the church.

We gather this morning from a week that has been – well – ugly.  The tone of the political campaign is deeply disturbing.  The economic system upon which we depend is teetering in the balance.  Some of us are wondering about our immediate economic security as jobs become more fragile; others are worried about their long term financial freedom as savings erode.  As I watched interviews with voters, especially those in the rural Midwest, and read a profile of Ohio’s rural voters in The New Yorker this week, I heard a steady refrain of this question: “Does anybody care about me?”

As we already know from politicians and policy makers – saying you care isn’t enough.

The assurance that God cares about each one of us is just an abstract idea unless we, the church, the Body of Christ, the stewards of this kingdom party, actively and intentionally practice the kind of hospitality that turns strangers into friends.

In order to do that, I suggest that we together commit ourselves to these practices.

1. Smile
2. Make eye contact with others
3. Exchange names (wearing name tags really helps here!)

I leave you with the challenge from today’s reading in Cultivating Fruitfulness.

“Radical hospitality begins with a single heart, a movement from ‘they ought’ to ‘I will.’ Take responsibility for inviting one person per month to a ministry of your church and for welcoming people you don’t know.”

It’s God’s party.  You come!

Let us pray: God, give us the courage we need to become the people you have called us to be. 

Amen.